Thursday, May 23, 2013

On Wednesday, we had an eventful day on the island. In one of
our projects, students were collecting sand samples to analyze the amount of
trash mixed in with the sand grains. You would be surprised with the
amount of trash is in the oceans, and how much of it gets washed up on beaches,
becoming mixed in with the sand and affecting plant and animal life. Trash and debris found in the oceans are mostly plastic and styrofoam, that has been just thrown away instead
of being recycled. Please remember to recycle your plastics. The environmental impact is huge, and we must do as much as possible to reduce/reuse/recycle.

My internet has been really weak while here on the
island. I didn’t see any questions from you today, so if any were sent,
I’m sorry that I missed them.

Today (Thursday) we toured the Smithsonian Marine Station on Carrie Bow Caye. After, we went snorkeling at a section of the Belize Barrier Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world! In the afternoon, we will be taking the boat back to the mainland, and staying in Dangriga. Friday we are heading back to Atlanta, so this will be my last blog post. I have really
enjoyed your questions. I look forward to seeing you all on June 3rd!

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Welcome to the middle of the week.I’m sure everyone is counting down the days
until summer.Kadie told me you only
have 10 days remaining!Summer is close,
but keep working hard until the end.

We had another eventful day working with town officials in Dangriga.After a very hot day, we caught a boat for a 45-minute
ride to South Water Caye.I am including
a picture for you to see how rough we have it here.We will be staying two nights before
returning back to the mainland.

Again, good questions today.I’ll do the best I can with them:

Question 1: How did the tzolkin or sacred round calendar
work that only had 260 days?There were 20 names for days in
ancient Maya (we only have 7, Monday through Sunday).There were also 13 numbers associated with
these names (example:Tuesday the 7th).Many
believe that the sacred cycle of the Tzolk’in (which means “division of days”)calendar
was based on the combination of these days and numbers (20x13=260).Others
suggest that it was based on the time from pregnancy to birth for a human.Regardless, this calendar was used as a way
to maintain specific rituals throughout the 260 days of the sacred year.

Question 2: The daily calendar shows 360 days and
based on the sun with 5 "unlucky" days. What were the unlucky
days? The calendar we use today is
based on the sun’s cycle around the Earth, and has 365.25 days.Every four years, we add up that ¼ of a day
and have a full day.This is February 29th,
or leap day.This is similar to the
Mayan calendar in that their calendar was based on 360 days.But the sun required 365.25 days to
completely orbit the Earth.They
believed that these five extra days were therefore “unlucky”.Additionally, there is no evidence that they
observed the “leap day”, so if you think about it, they were losing more than
just five days each year.

Most believe that the five
unlucky days show up at the end of each year, but since we do not know when the
year officially started, we cannot know for sure. Remembering that the Mayans were extremely
spiritual, and wanted to keep their Gods happy, each of the 360 days were
dedicated to a certain God.These last
five days were seen as 'useless days' or the days that were dedicated to no Gods,
and anything that happened during these days were used to forecast the events
of the coming year. Therefore the Mayan people tried to do as little as
possible on these days, to not have anything bad happen to them and cause their
upcoming year to be full of bad luck.Any
person who was born during this time was considered unlucky.

Question 3: How did they shrink heads? Whose
and heads were they?

From what I understand, many Central and
South American civilizations would decapitate the head of enemies in battle,
perhaps the leaders.Then, during
spiritual ceremonies, enemies’ heads were carefully reduced through boiling and
heating.Since the Mayan people believed
that life was continuous after death, this was an the attempt to lock the
enemy’s spirit and protect the people from spiritual revenge.

I’m going to try sending this email now, and hope for
the best.The internet hasn’t been
treating me too well the past couple of days.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Today, we traveled to Dangriga,
Belize.On the way, we stopped by the
Belize Zoo and saw many of the native animals that I discussed in yesterdays
message.My favorite were the big
cats!I am attaching a picture of Junior
Buddy, a six-year old Jaguar who was born at the zoo, and was absolutely
beautiful.We were actually able to get
into a smaller cage within his cage to get close enough to him and feel his
fur.I have a video of him licking my
head last year, so I will have to dig it out to share with you.

Excellent questions today, everyone.I have so much more that I could have talked
about with each of these, and I look forward to talking with you in person to
discuss more about them.For now, here
is a brief explanation.

Question 1: What was the most important ritual?It appears that there was no one single
ritual that was more important than another.However, one that shows up often in stone carvings is the ritual of
sacrifice to keep the Gods from getting angry.There were well over 100 Gods and Goddesses that the Mayans believed
in.Of the most important were the God
of rain and harvest (Chak), fertility (Ix-Chel), and creation (Itzamna).For example, if Chak, the rain God was angry,
then the people might suffer drought, or even flooding and destroy their
crops.They needed to keep Chak happy,
and this sometimes meant giving offerings of pottery, food, clothing, or sometimes
offering the blood or even soul of a person.The rituals of worship were very important for the Mayan people.

Question 2: What do you know about the game pok-a-tok
that they played in the ancient ball court and did you always die
if you lost?Ball court
ruins have found in each of the Mayan city-centers.Attached is a picture we took of the ball
court at Xunantunich (in the background).I will find a better picture to show you. The rules have been loosely defined, but it
seems that each city-center had different rules of the game, based on the
layout of the courts and the stone carvings representing the games.These carvings depict a game that was played
with a very heavy rubber ball made from the sap of rubber trees.Players had to use their elbows, shoulders,
hips and knees to get the ball into a series of hoops to score points.Sounds like a cross between basketball and
soccer, doesn’t it?

Many of
these games were played with high stakes:death.You might think that the
losers were the ones who were killed after the game, but surprisingly, there is
also evidence that the winners were killed after the game.This is hard to understand, but there was
significant spiritual meaning to winning the game.This message will get very long if I continue
to elaborate, so it might be best for me to discuss this in person when I come
visit on June 3rd.Just know
that winning, and therefore being sacrificed to the Gods was a major honor for
the Mayan people, and therefore the players played their hardest to be the
winners, and then be offered to the Gods in sacrifice.So, to answer your question, when the games
had high spiritual implications, it could have been either the losers or the
winners that were killed after the game.We can discuss this more soon.

Question 3: Do you have any update on the destruction of
that monument?I have not
heard any updated information.That site
is a few hours north of where we are.I
do know that the landowners and construction workers could face up to 10 years
in prison and 10 thousand dollars fine if they are convicted of willfully
destroying the temple.Since it is
already political, that might not even happen.Sad but true.

Tomorrow, we are working in the city of
Dangriga with the town council to determine what open spaces they have and what
they can do to improve the space for public use.After this work, we are packing up and taking
a 45 minute boat ride to South Water Caye, a very small (about 9 acres) island
on the Belize Barrier Reef… the second largest barrier reef in the world,
second only to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.We will be staying two nights on the island
working with the South Water Caye Marine Reserve and the Smithsonian Institution
Marine Research Station on nearby Carrie Bow Caye.While there is solar powered internet on
South Water, it is very weak.I will do
my best to answer your emails over the next two nights.If you do not hear from me, you’ll understand
that the internet wasn’t strong enough to get the message out.

Until you hear from me again, enjoy
learning about Belize and the Mayan people.I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Welcome back from the weekend.It
has been an exciting couple of days here in Belize.I have added a few more pictures that we took
this weekend.

On Saturday, our group visited the world famous Actun Tunichil Muknal, or
ATM cave.This is a very wet cave, and
we had to swim in several sections that had water over our heads!Over 1400 artifacts from the Mayan civilization
have been found in this cave, including pottery and artifacts from rituals and
ceremonies.Also found are the skeletal remains
of 14 humans. I am attaching a picture
from the famous “Crystal Maiden” that is the only completely intact skeleton in
the cave.This person died over 1000
years ago!Visitors are no longer
allowed to take cameras into the cave, so I had to borrow this picture from the public domain.All of
the remains are from ceremonies of sacrifice, the people were killed to make
their Gods happy.

Sunday, we went to the ancient Mayan city-center of Xunantunich (picture).This city began over 2000
years ago and was abandoned nearly 1200 years ago.I have
many pictures and videos to share with you.

You have perfect questions for today, because on Monday, we are visiting
the Belize Zoo to see most of Belize’s native animals.

What is the official language of Belize?Belize is a British Colony, so the official
language is English.However, being so
close to Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, Spanish, Creole, and Garafuna are
very common.Many still speak the Mayan
language in certain parts of Belize.

What are some of the native animals?Life is everywhere in Belize, and I have attached some pictures that we just took this weekend!The most popular animals include Howler (picture) and
Spider Monkeys, Jaguars, Iguanas (picture) 8-10 different poisonous snakes, many
different types of parrots, many types of bats (picture of a small fruit bat)
and tarantulas.I was able to upload a
video of the Howler Monkeys we saw at the Mayan Ruins.The sound they make is very scary, and loud
for only being about 20 pounds each!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8YUBZ4C0QY&feature=youtu.be

I will take
plenty of pictures at the Belize Zoo and show you more of the animals
that can be found here.

After the
Zoo, we will be heading towards the coast and staying in Dangriga.I am sure Mr. Schmidt has showed you a map of
Belize, but you can find one here to follow us:http://www.mapsofworld.com/belize/cities-map.htmlSo that you can follow along, we arrived in
Belize City, have spent the first five days in San Ignacio, and will finish up
our trip in Dangriga.The Belize Zoo is
near Belmopan.